Prescription-Drug Monitoring Cuts Doctor-Shopping for Painkillers

March 2, 2017

“State programs that require physicians to check drug registries before writing prescriptions appeared to slash the odds of doctor-shopping for opioid pain relievers, a new study found.

“Our study shows that prescription-drug monitoring programs are a promising component of a multifaceted strategy to address the opioid epidemic,” Ryan Mutter, one of the study authors, said in a phone interview. He is a health economist at the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Service Administration in Rockville, Maryland.

Mutter and other researchers analyzed annual nationwide surveys of drug use and health from 2004 until 2014, when 36 states implemented prescription-drug monitoring programs, or PDMPs.

The study, reported in the journal Addictive Behaviors, found that in states where physicians were required to check an electronic database before writing an opioid prescription, the odds that two or more doctors would be giving pain relievers for nonmedical purposes to a single patient were reduced by 80 percent. States that implemented voluntary monitoring programs showed a 56 percent reduction in the odds of doctor-shopping.”